1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a dust collector for a vacuum cleaner having a dust removal function which dislodges dust from a filter installed in the dust collector.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to solve inconvenience of changing a dust bag and burden of expenses, a vacuum cleaner with a centrifugal separator has come into wide use, which is equipped with a dust collector comprising a centrifugal separator which separates dust flowed in by negative pressure from air, a dust container which contains the dust separated by the centrifugal separator, and a filter (a secondary filter) which filters out minute matters included in the air from which the dust is separated.
The conventional dust collector may generally have deteriorated suction force as the secondary filter has fine dust gradually accumulated thereon, and subsequently decreased efficiency of picking up foreign matters from a cleaning surface or separating dust inside the centrifugal separator.
Accordingly, various prior arts are provided for removing the accumulated dust from the secondary filter.
Examples of such prior arts are ‘a connection apparatus’ of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-272112 (hereinafter referred to as “prior art 1”) and ‘an electric cleaner (a vacuum cleaner)’ of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2008-154800 (hereinafter referred to as “prior art 2”).
Prior art 1 discloses a configuration that a driven unit moves back and forth along a guide member by a drive unit while projections formed on a driven member impact on a filter so as to dislodge dust accumulated on the filter. Prior art 2 discloses a configuration that an elastic member moves back and forth according to a rotation of gear while impacting on a filter so as to dislodge dust accumulated on the filter.
The above described prior arts are capable of removing dust accumulated on a filter (a secondary filter) installed in a dust collector autonomously while driving a vacuum cleaner. However, prior art 1 presents a problem in that since a driving unit is arranged to overlap with a driven unit, a combination structure is wide, and in case of a dust collector having a vertical structure, this results in increasing a height of the whole dust collector.
Further, said prior arts 1 and 2 present a problem in that as configurations of impacting on a filter using the projections formed on both sides of the driven unit (prior art 1) and the elastic member of grid structure (prior art 2), since a contact area is small between the projections formed on the driven unit or the elastic member for dislodging dust and the filter, vibration is not sent to the entire filter, and thus dust accumulated on the filter is not removed effectively. Another problem lies in that dust is not removed evenly from the entire filter.